What a Feeling,'' sung by Irene Cara in a manner directly evocative of her big hit, ''Fame,'' still possesses a buoyant energy of its own. The two best features of those songs are the title track and Giorgio Moroder. The disk cannot provide the sensuous appeal of Jennifer Beals in the main role and the often arresting imagery of the director, Adrian Lyne. But it does offer a series of dance numbers that in turn provide an excuse for a wide range of popular songs, and these are gathered together on the soundtrack (Casablanca 811492-1 M-1). That happened a few years ago with ''FM,'' the soundtrack of which reportedly made more money than the film it served to ''accompany.''Ī similar phenomenon may be taking place right now with the soundtrack for ''Flashdance.'' The film itself is a dance-musical: The plot, about a young woman's dream to succeed as a dancer, is full of awkward improbabilities and a kind of unfocused vulgarity. Perhaps the crassest way to salvage a not-very-good film is to assemble a soundtrack of otherwise unavailable songs by well-known recording stars and use it both to publicize the film and to make money on its own. Three examples for the past couple of months help illuminate the shifting relationships between musical films and their aural documentation. Partly for this reason, and partly from a renewed interest by directors and producers in the musical as a cinematic form, we have been deluged recently with film soundtrack albums.
Even in this age of record-business recession, the presence of a commercially viable soundtrack LP can bolster the financial fortunes of a film.
0 kommentar(er)
